HUGE interview tomorrow

levensailor · September 2010

For a Network Analyst at a local university. Would be a 20k pay raise!

I had excellent references, and I know a few people on the inside that I could name drop..
The interview is done by a board headed by a network analyst with 4 other non-IT people.

Any tips? Questions they may ask? I'm so freaking excited I won't be able to sleep tonight....

earweed · September 2010

Tip1 - get a good nights sleep.

GOOD LUCK TOMORROW

ssampier · September 2010

Stay up all night studying all the network acronyms.

Don't do that. Relax, breathe, and you'll rock the interview.

Ivanr4g63 · September 2010

Agreed...

Just try to be as relaxed as possible, be very enthusiastic but not a suck-up towards the interview. The "board" who'll interview you, well... They are people just like you, don't let them intimidate you or get you nervous in any way!

You'll do great.

Best of lucks!

imfrom51 · September 2010

Sounds like it's more of a personality fit interview. As there are 4 non IT people, they are looking for how you fit into the team. As has been stated, relax. Be yourself, and make sure you are dressed right (suit and tie).

Let us know how it goes.

thenjduke · September 2010

Good luck and hang in there.

ssampier · September 2010

How did things go?

I'm going to guess things went

cbsharpe0824 · September 2010

wish you well sailor! Look forward to the good news!

tpatt100 · September 2010

I had a job with the City that only had one IT person and the rest were HR types. It was more personality type and they really hammered down on my qualifications such as courses I took certs etc.

RS_MCP · September 2010

Sleep well, dress well, smell well, drink plenty of water so you are hydrated, listen to all the questions carefully and answer them correctly so they make sense, make sure to ask them questions and GOOD LUCK!

azjag · September 2010

Get a good night's sleep, make sure everything is ready the night before (clothes and resume). Directions, names of people you are meeting with, questions you are going to ask, refresh yourself on the company itself. You should do well.

levensailor · October 2010

Update:

Things went extremely well. I prepared by doing research on the staff and how it was organized, what projects they were doing and what technologies they were using. You can't really know that much about a person and how much they know in an hour, so I wrote down things I could try to "fit in" to the conversation, keywords like QOS, VMware, Nagios, WCS.. even if they weren't asked I wanted to try to fit them in.

I also prepared by printing out a list of top 50 interview questions, because I knew 5 non-IT people would be asking those, and they did.

Stuff I think I did really well on:
I memorized everyones name and when shaking hands good bye used them.

I knew from background research of the organization that one of the guys was a Network Analyst just by memorizing his name and before the interview started I struck up a small conversation with him, as I figured quick he was the more technical of the two IT dept interviewers.

I seemed to fit in a few of the key words and I didn't get stumped on any of the questions really.

Things I didn't do so hot on:
When asked "what is your biggest weakness" I said that like all technically gifted, right brained individuals, I wasn't the biggest people person. (I immediately saw everyone start writing!!1) but I got myself out of it slightly by stating that I go to networking events all the time and the first 15 minutes in the room with random people can be awkward, but by the end of it, I do very well, and that I was a social person with people skills, but would never be able to make a living as a salesman. all my references stated I had good people skills so hopefully they will think I was modest.

When asked what a recent crisis I had and how I handled it, I gave an OK example about walking into a network where someone had reset a linksys router and 2 dhcp servers were on the line. I should have told the story about when I asked ATT to drop a new block of ips in our 4xt1 router and she did, but took out the old ones and left us down and 6 businesses who use our bandwidth through wimax bridges, which I had to run and reconfigure routers, change dns entries to terminal servers, and send the intern running to fix the most laid back branch.

also I had to configure a cisco switch vlan without looking at anything and since I don't work on cisco with my current job, my ios skills wasn't in memory as much as it was when i took the ccna exam.

I find out end of next week if I get it, there were at most 5 other interviewees so i'm crossing my fingers.

HUGE interview tomorrow

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